Re: When Nerdom has become popular in the general public
I'll debate, to some degree, the fact that being a Star Wars fan in the 80's and 90's got you ridicule...because other popular films were routinely making references to Star Wars (Beverly Hills Cop 2--"So, are you driving? Or are you, like, using the Force or something?!", Twister--"That's no moon, that's a space station!", etc). A lot of the 'traditional terrain' for geeks and nerds has been slowly gaining in popularity over time. I'd just started working at an amusement park when the first X-Men movie came out...and all of these otherwise 'cool kids' that were singers, dancers, actors, in rock bands, etc were all chafing at the bit to go see it. We've had a whole string of highly successful comic-book-based movies (not just the Marvel ones...there have been several that started out as titles under DC's 'Vertigo' imprint) that have made a lot of people go, "Wait...that's what comic books are? Man, maybe I should check that out..."
And then there's the TV shows...Smallville put Superman back in the mainstream spotlight again, and paved the way for a lot of successors. Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly both got the attention of a lot of people who would otherwise likely have steered clear of 'geek country'. And I've lost track of how many seasons of Big Bang Theory we've had now, which has popularized almost everything in the world of geek-chic.
The long and short of it, though, I think, is that pop culture is steered, largely, by geeks, now. They/We write the scripts for TV, run many of the production facilities, have infiltrated Hollywood, and control most of the entertainment sites online. We have become a major force in telling the world what 'cool' is supposed to be. I'd even argue that something like playing D&D, while still regarded as geeky, is becoming accepted in the mainstream, because there are a lot of people in Hollywood who've fessed up to being gamers...if Vin Diesel can play D&D, it's not THAT 'alternative' anymore.
It's the Information Age...and it's pretty much always been the geeks and nerds that have controlled, in some measure, the flow of information. So it seems only natural that their hobbies and interests have colored mainstream culture. And it's not like it's a universal thing, either...I mean, I've always considered myself something of a geek, from way back when, and all of my friends were. But there are still people I meet, work with, etc that make me sit back and go, "Wow...you are REALLY a geek, aren't you?"